Three black bear cubs were rescued from a dumpster in Ruidoso, New Mexico, by local residents Shirley and Tom Schenk. The couple heard the bears crying through the night and came to their rescue as soon as there was enough light, armed with a ladder and a pickup truck. Apparently, these bears are notorious for their mischievous conduct.

A black couple in Crystal Springs, Mississippi says that a predominantly white Baptist church refused to let them get married because of their race.

Charles and Te’Andrea Wilson told WLBT that the day before they were to be married, the pastor of First Baptist Church of Crystal Springs informed them the ceremony would have to be moved due to the reaction of some white church members — even though the couple had attended the church regularly.

“The church congregation had decided no black could be married at that church, and that if [the pastor] went on to marry her, then they would vote him out the church,” Charles Wilson explained.

This patient was not treated for three days, given no wound checks, and his dressings were soiled. He was not given any analgesics prior to his surgery, and remained conscious. U.S. military personnel in Afghanistan at the time described his surgery taking place in "semi-sterile conditions." This patient died 4 days later of paritonitis related sepsis without ever going back to operating room for care.

@Vornaskotti: Most of the the list of "10 things Americans etc" are quite accurate, but I find that "4. We Are Poor At Expressing Gratitude And Affection" seems to lack an understanding of the wide range of cultural expectations in how we express ourselves that the world has. That the US has even, according to region and other demographics. A bit simplistic much? Same goes for "8. We’re Status-Obsessed And Seek Attention". I get that it is a list of generalities, but those two just seemed a bit too much. That said, 1,2,3,5 and 6 were all things I was all too aware of before I even turned 10, and was frustrating as hell to have to live with when growing up, especially whenever people wanted to talk about international anything.

The first systematic look at the New York police department's response to Occupy Wall Street protests paints a damning picture of an out-of-control and aggressive organization that routinely acted beyond its powers.

In a report that followed an eight-month study (pdf), researchers at the law schools of NYU and Fordham accuse the NYPD of deploying unnecessarily aggressive force, obstructing press freedoms and making arbitrary and baseless arrests.

The NYPD practices documented in the report include:

• Aggressive, unnecessary and excessive police force against peaceful protesters, bystanders, legal observers, and journalists. This included the use of batons, pepper spray, metal barricades, scooters, and horses.

• Obstruction of press freedoms and independent legal monitoring, including arrests of at least 10 journalists, and multiple cases of preventing journalists from reporting on protests or barring and evicting them from specific sites.

• Pervasive surveillance of peaceful political activity.

• Violent late-night raids on peaceful encampments.

• Unjustified closure of public spaces, dispersal of peaceful assemblies, and trapping of protesters.

• Arbitrary and selective rule enforcement and baseless arrests.

• Failures to ensure transparency about government policies.

• Failures to ensure accountability for those allegedly responsible for abuses.

The report argues that the lack of transparency and accountability is especially troubling because the public does not know whether police actions are guided by specific written policies, or whether they are random or ad hoc.

Busting stereotypes that peg feminists as men-haters, a new study shows that having a feminist partner is linked with healthier, more romantic heterosexual relationships.

The study, published online this week in the journal Sex Roles, relied on surveys of both college students and older adults, finding that women with egalitarian attitudes do find mates and men do find them attractive. In fact, results reveal they are having a good time, maybe a better time than the non-feminists.

The U.S. mass murder rate does not seem to rise or fall with the availability of automatic weapons. It reached its highest level in 1929, when fully automatic firearms were expensive and mostly limited to soldiers and organized criminals. The rate dipped in the mid-1930s, staying relatively low before surging again in the 1970s through 1990s. Some criminologists attribute the late-century spike to the potential for instant notoriety: Beginning with Charles Whitman’s 1966 shooting spree from atop a University of Texas tower, mass murderers became household names. Others point out that the mass murder rate fairly closely tracks the overall homicide rate. In the 2000s, for example, both the mass murder and the homicide rates dropped to their lowest levels since the 1960s.

A Pakistani engineer has built a car that runs on water, a feat that left onlookers astounded.

Engineer Waqar Ahmad drove his car using water as fuel Thursday during a demonstration for parliamentarians, scientists and students, Dawn reported from this Pakistan capital.

He said cars could be driven by a system fuelled by water instead of petrol or CNG.

The onlookers were taken aback when they saw it and a cabinet sub-committee lauded the ‘Water Fuel Kit Project’.

The media report explained that the water fuelling system is a technology in which ‘hydrogen bonding’ with distilled water produces hydrogen gas to run the car.

Ahmad had earlier told Religious Affairs Minister Syed Khurshid Ahmad Shah about the unique project and it was taken to the federal cabinet which asked its sub—committee to discuss it.

During the demonstration, Shah himself drove the car.

The minister said that Ahmad would be given complete security and the formula would be kept secure.

It would be an understatement to say I'm rather skeptical about this affair, even though my knowledge of thermodynamics are scarce : as far as I know you need to provide energy to extract hydrogen from water, more energy than you will get back when you burn that hydrogen. But the thing that amuses me there is the involvement of the "Religious Affair Minister"...